Achilles/ Fire 1982

Excerpted from Clouds, leaves, waves.


4.
shaped spirits of archetypal
torsos, struggle, plunge,
release--
contemplating guilt, drunken
and whirled as dervish,
one--
plunging
to depths--
drowned in lust,
the fueled fires light the beach.

Black figures stand and stare
at shadows on the moon.
Philosophy, hardly biblical, is
powered by darkest boasts
the colors of Melville and Pollock.




9.
fires on the beach,
the silhouetted forms in black
wetsuits, heroic, from another age.
the Shadows of blazoned on cliffs,
voices whisper, here and then--
video and photos flash,
that we were here, alive tonight.
A plane blinks in the dark,
we look for the moon to rise,
platform Holly flashes like a cake
on the horizon.

She told of Ed Ricketts and
further away places in Mexico,
The Sea of Cortez, I remembered,
striped snails and his saying,
“...that many of the inhabitants
of this region, could scarcely be taken
as obvious.” We saw figures
in the stars and then forgot.








This post is related to recent post on Achilles/ Fire event in 1982.

see:http://extragregorybotts.blogspot.com/

some Goldfinches from, All One , revolving

Not wanting to leave

this Wilder place
And he’s following a star--
Writing it down
Each day
The gold finches

Are back
The kitchen table
The flooded warm light
Silent wind outside, the limbs flinch
Whirrr--- and are gone

I walked with the dog
Worried I’d spent too much time
In this abstract head, removed
Missed these amazing moments
Playing themselves out

Gold finches gone
Missed the cottonwoods
all in gold
Back along the ridgeline
Down into the wash

A handful of feathers
I’m down there looking
On my hands and knees, realizing
I’m surrounded by Lion’s tracks
These feathers

had been in a Lion’s mouth

Gold Finches, from Back 2 the Studio

he saw the light flowing across
the kitchen table,
all quiet as the goldfinches
bobbed noiselessly
on the goldenrod
it was, 2000 the end of the end
we were still here

any one wondered as to how
the images continued and alternated
the narrative rambling
to the symbol height, the ordered
abstract direction winding round
renewed, then investigated

sacred revolving
down to profane
from that eternal and universal
term, to every day
sight, the flower there

now in the SUN, increased
that sublime, come down
he was down and out, hitching
on Road Movie
the desert washboard

End of Summer selection from Road Movie, 2001

(Goldfinches make an appearance and then again, in above.)


It seemed the first day of Autumn,
falling from height
to dream of passion
sadness of a morning after,
keeping company

with the wind
the quaking aspen,

reflections in the glass
the mind going over--
motions of searching bodies
mixing time with the Chinese bells
something reminding

the strewn poem, in the wind
intermixes into a complexity
and mystery
and style
of going about

it all, the ants marching on
carrying the
‘hopper high aloft--'
through hail stone storm and festival of summer end
can not go back to fix anything

summer fades, autumn onset
the many paintings missed,
that Sunflower’s bloom,
finch bobbing
in the wind, the toads gone,

bunny hopping along
pausing, the ancient fear in its eye
watching, I get up to make some lunch
in the silent house, the warm sun
across the table

looking out on the changing light
cloudy amphitheater of yard,
the flowers turning,
the magpie’s sawlike voices
announcing themselves,

I try to own it
decorating my head
with the revolving orders,
these cut out shapes
of cloud and hill and bush

a wreathe
of golden
flowers
feeling
the whole
once again
and
journey’s end

letting go
and satisfied

the moment